Well, I guess this is why you have a soft open. Shanik, the long-awaited sibling to Vancouver’s Vij’s restaurant, is pushing back its official opening. During Saturday’s friends and family dinner, chef-owner Meeru Dhalwala discovered some major technical problems with the kitchen equipment.

Oh, there was also the small matter of Dhalwala’s painstakingly hired nighttime kitchen staff quitting 48 hours before Shanik’s soft debut over the weekend, citing the long commutes between the restaurant at 500 Terry Ave N and their homes in outlying suburbs. Dhalwala prides herself on hiring skilled home cooks with no professional kitchen experience, and the process of finding such women in an unfamiliar city filled her thoughts in the months leading up to Shanik’s opening. But on Saturday night, Dhalwala at least appeared equinamous. She did a last-minute “emergency hire” and put together a team that hails mostly from the Lake City area to work and train alongside the cooks she brought down from Canada.

Shanik is hoping to open on Wednesday, kitchen and equipment gods willing. We will, of course, be all over this, but the restaurant's Twitter feed is another good bet for updates.